When I left my parents’ home for my first semester of college six years ago, my sense of normalcy was suspended… for about six years. During college, being at home wasn’t the same as things being “back to normal”, and although being back at school again after a break was a little closer to “back to normal”, it wasn’t quite there either.

Then after graduation Daniel and I bought our own home, but I lived here with Caroline, and we planned our wedding, spent a lot of time as crazy commuters, got married, went on a honeymoon, came home and settled into normal life together. Well, almost. Caroline moved out a few months later, God gave us a tiny baby to grow, we got ready to be parents, I dropped down to part-time work, then zero-time work, and Daniel completed his master’s degree. You’ve heard all of this before. My point is that we never quite had a “normal”, despite normal work weeks, etc. Then Charlie was born. We left the hospital and came home to settle into normal life together as three. At least, that was the goal.

It wasn’t until the festivities of last week, and then the end of them, that I realized I’m finally there—I have a “normal” to get back to now. My cousin Rose came to stay at our house Tuesday night, and her sister Theresa joined us here on Wednesday; they slept in our living room. Thursday was Thanksgiving, obviously, which we spent at Daniel’s parents’ house and then joined the party at my parents’ for dessert, and Friday was a family reunion also at my parents’ house. Over the course of those few days, Charlie missed out on a few good naps and we watched a couple of bedtimes come and go before we managed to get our little boy home at night.

Daniel was home for an extra long weekend which was wonderful, and we had a lot of fun spending time with family, but by the time Sunday night came around I was admittedly looking forward to the next morning. I would be spending the whole day with my Charlie, putting him down for naps in his own bed, reading him stories, going for a walk to get the mail, hanging out on the couch together while I eat my lunch, and just doing all of the stuff that we usually do. It was nice to get back to normal again!